Mark Bogle has enjoyed years of success overseeing large industrial plants, and his experience with a start-up plant in Singapore more than a decade ago has given him the insight he will need as the Eastman Longview plant accelerates the transformation of knowledge to the younger generation.
“The Longview site is one of the most exposed sites from a demographic perspective in Eastman’s fleet of sites,” said Bogle, “so we have had a strategy in place to deal with this for a number of years. The baby boomer demographic exposure is starting to impact the rest of the corporation now, and I think we are doing the right things. When you are experiencing a high rate of turnover, it’s important you utilize deliberate leadership strategies for translating your core values to the shop floor level.”
If you were just driving through Longview, you probably would never realize one of the biggest area employers is a large chemical plant that rests on 6,000 acres of land quietly tucked away in the tree lines near the Sabine River.
Bogle, who has an affinity for high-performance sports cars, said he gets revved up about people development. From 1996-2000, he lived in Singapore where he was the plant manager overseeing a plant being constructed from the ground up. If that alone was not enough of a challenge, Bogle had to deal with Singapore’s culture for high turnover.
“They saw moving from one company to the next as a way to further develop themselves,” Bogle said.
When he started the Singapore plant, he had 75 people come over from Texas, but the problem was they were only going to stay two to three months.
“We had to be very precise in what knowledge we were going to transfer to 150 newly hired locals who were going to run the plant,” Bogle said. “So these Texans were very motivated to transfer their knowledge and make sure it was understood so they could go home with confidence the Singaporeans could continue to run the plant safely and reliably. We did by defining exactly what everyone who was in training needed to know, and we were very deliberate and specific in what we taught them.”
That experience gave Bogle the perfect preparation for the current war for talent the industry is experiencing.
“Before I assumed the site manager role in 2009, the Longview site had enjoyed a very low turnover rate and not hired many people for 10 to 15 years. As a result, our default to learning was a tribal knowledge transfer process that took many years to effectively transfer knowledge to new employees,” he said. “But now we have the real business need of getting more people up to speed in a much shorter time frame. The good thing is Eastman believes in developing employees on an ongoing basis. It’s not just initial training.”
Bogle insists on establishing deliberate systems for leadership development. He said people at the Longview plant know long before he or she gets selected for a leadership role what it is expected and what leadership is all about.
“You have to be sure all new leaders know how important core values are and they must, in turn, be a champion for them,” Bogle said. “We have a great leadership team, and we have a fantastic leadership development effort.”
Eastman Texas Operations employs roughly 1,500 people and is one of the largest chemical facilities in the state. It manufactures more than 40 major chemical and polymer products. Virtually all products are manufactured from three primary raw materials — propane, ethane and natural gas. The company is connected to its principal supply sources by seven pipelines, some of which are 200 miles long and extend to the Texas Gulf Coast. Eastman’s production units are high-volume, continuous processes, which operate 24/7. On average, the company ships nearly 10 million pounds per day of chemical product to its customers worldwide.
“We had record-high capital investments this year and will have more for the next two or three years,” Bogle said. “Revitalization of the shale gas, the lower costs of ethane and propane and the continued expansion of our derivative plants have all played a role in increased activity.”
In the past five years, some of the more significant work on the site has been upgrading of infrastructure and power distribution systems including the shutdown of two older boilers and the construction of a newer one with all the latest controls and technologies. The plant has expanded its derivative capacity as well as hundreds of millions of pounds of olefins. It restarted one of its cracking plants that had been shut down during the mid 2000s when the economics were not favorable. A new cracking furnace was constructed in the largest cracker on site, but there has been no construction of any new units for a specific chemical or product.
Bogle and his wife returned to Singapore in the spring of this year.
“What really gave me satisfaction was when they celebrated their 10th year of operation; I got to see the initial employees we hired who were still there,” he said. “My wife and I ate dinner with nine of our professional employees who were there with me during the initial start-up. That’s nine of about 25, which is unbelievable! So when you think about the turnover we are going to experience here in the years to come, I think we have established a great competitive advantage, and we will grow because of the deliberate knowledge transfer.”
Another reason the door at Eastman does not revolve is because of emphasis on recognizing people who perform.
“Eastman has a variety of ways of recognizing people,” Bogle said, “and our leaders know you will get more of what you recognize and reward.”
His plant utilizes an Employee Team Recognition (ETR) award system, which can be used to identify people who are making a positive impact at the plant. There is an annual process on compensation but the ETR system can result in immediate recognition and compensation. Workers also can benefit from a BeSafe program, which recognizes teams that have identified a hazard and developed a creative solution for eliminating or mitigating the hazard. Bogle participates in lunch celebrations each quarter with the teams that were judged by their peers to have the best safety improvement ideas in that quarter.
“I really enjoy the opportunity to participate in these lunch celebrations,” Bogle said. “It gives me a chance to thank each member of that particular team personally for his or her great innovation and commitment to safety. I get to interact with the team and hear what is on their mind. I tell them, ‘Hey, this is your personal town hall with the site manager.’ This is a great way to reward and recognize the great work they are doing.”
Bogle said people need to know positive, hard work matters.
“My quick coaching course is you can evaluate leaders by what their followers do,” he said. “And followers do what they are coached to do most of the time. So, I expect our leadership team to look at employee behavior as the outcome of our leadership and coaching performance. We believe in a culture of shared accountability between management and team members.
“We want every new employee to understand he or she is joining a business and their contributions are expected and valued. When we are good stewards of the business by continually learning and improving to sustain and grow value creation, we create job security. Our ‘secret sauce’ is a culture of caring for the safety and well-being of our employees, their families and the communities within which we operate. It is what drives our competitive advantage and makes Eastman a very special place to work.”
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Eastman Texas Operations
P.O. Box 7444
Highway 149-Kodak Blvd.
Longview, TX 75603
(903) 237-5000
www.eastman.com
Employees: 1,500
Plant size: 6,000 acres
Products: More than 40 major chemical and polymer products that are supplied to industrial customers for use in the manufacture of hundreds of consumer items essential to quality of life.
